Personalizing Medicine with “Intelligent Data” in the As-a-Service Economy

“Water, water everywhere, / nor any a drop to drink.” The amount of personal data associated with a person in their lifetime is like the ocean that surrounds the sailor in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Addressing this ocean of data is a well-recognized challenge in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry today, where the effort to personalize healthcare and medicine is underway, and government regulation and public and private reimbursement is increasingly associated with successful interactions and impact on health and medical outcomes. Simply put, access to and insight on data is critical to success.

In our recent “Ideals of As-a-Service” primary research, 72% of healthcare and pharmaceutical industry participants ranked “Intelligent Data” — real-time applied analytics models, techniques, and insights from big data—as having the greatest potential impact on their organization’s performance if it were in truly available today through sourcing models.

A number of sourcing service providers are exploring ways to partner with their clients and provide industry-specific services to help realize this vision. Infosys, for example, is applying a more “Intelligent” approach with a pharmaceutical client, working to identify and implement new ways to approach clinical trials—from how patients are identified, how data gathered from one study can be repurposed for another, and the role of interventions.

When personalized medicine was first taking shape, statisticians and scientists were looking for numbers and algorithms to give us the right information for treating patients with medicine that mapped to their DNA. Now, it’s about doctors having access to the genomic data—combining it with other relevant data—and being able to make connections with patients. Data visualization, the physician’s experience, and the emotional connection with the patient are critical elements to making the data real, impactful, and personalized.

“You still need people to make it happen,” said Subhro Mallik, AVP, Life Sciences at Infosys, in a panel discussion.¹ “It will not just be addressed by a button.” The same is true for behind the scenes in the pharma companies and healthcare organizations.  Using genetic, genomic, and lifestyle data to help customize health care and medicine impacts not just the diagnosis and interaction with the patient but also the way that medicines are developed and taken to market.  This means that business processes also need to change.

How to harness and use data in an intelligent way presents both a challenge and an opportunity for pharma and healthcare companies, and HfS believes a strategic use of sourcing partners can help them be effective. Personalized health care and medicine may not be too far off in the future if we bring together the right ecosystem of partners to make it happen.  HfS will be evaluating sourcing service providers on their role in enabling industry-specific processes and impact in the industry later this year in a Blueprint report.  We will be looking for how service providers are tapping into the 8 Ideals of the As-a-Service Economy, including design thinking, business cloud, and new engagement models, along with “intelligent data” to help realize the vision for a focus on the individual in the midst of an ocean of possibility.